The current state of the art in online search engines is highly advanced in its ability to retrieve documents (e.g., web pages or portions thereof, images, audio files, video, multimedia, etc.) that are responsive to the terms of a query. Search engines today can quickly retrieve specific documents that match the terms of the query.
Web site operators often contract with a search engine provider to obtain an interface to the search engine on the operator's website. This allows users who are on the operator's website to perform a search of the entire internet from a search box on website. Conventionally, these searches will return the same results as if they were done directly from the web site of the search engine provider, in that they do not reflect any influence on the results in view of the contents or theme of the website, or the interests of the website operator.
For example, on a website that focuses on providing information about major league baseball, a general search on “giants” will typically return search results oriented to giants. However, the site operator would prefer to customize the search results to reflect the interests of users of the site, who presumably are interested in baseball. Thus, it would be preferable to the site operator if the generalized search instead returned results oriented towards the San Francisco Giants baseball team.
Similarly, using current search approaches, site operators of two different website, one of which is oriented towards sports, and another of which is oriented towards politics, will provides users of their respective sites exactly the same results a given query to a general search engine, for example, the query o the “drug testing in baseball.” However, the first site operator would prefer that users obtain results about baseballs teams have implemented drug testing, while the latter site operator would prefer that users obtain results about legislation related to drug testing in sports. Thus, there is a need for providing a mechanism and methodology for customizing search results provided by a search engine in accordance with the interests of the site operators.